Musings on Todd's Hair - Blair
by Tessaray
Summary: Drabble. Vintage Todd and Blair, 1994. Blair reflects as she washes Todd's hair. Set a few months into their first marriage, just after Blair finds out she really is pregnant but before she's developed genuine feelings for Todd.


Blair repositions herself on the edge of the tub and squirts more shampoo into her palm. She's still learning how much it takes to get Todd's impossibly thick hair clean, but then she's still learning a lot of things about him. As she massages the lather into his scalp, he actually purrs.

A few months ago, when the two of them were the town lepers, easing the loneliness in friendly competition for the title of Most Pathetic, she would have bet a thousand dollars that Todd Manning did not, under any circumstances, purr.

But he was different then, cowed, miserable, afraid of himself. He's still difficult, but he has things now that he didn't have then: money, power, his newspaper, a future. He talks about their baby with wonder and hope; things she's never seen in him before. She thinks sometimes of telling him the truth, that the baby was a lie she'd concocted to trap him, to get her hands on his inheritance—but why, now that she really is pregnant with his child and it's all working out so well?

She tilts his head back to work the shampoo through the thick, heavy hair at his crown. His eyes are closed, his lips parted, and even here in the bathtub, vulnerable as a child, he stirs her. He always has, from their first meeting at Rodi's, with that pretty mouth and magnetic, effortless sensuality. It's why she pushed him away after their first night together; they had connected, and it was deep, and good, and she couldn't have him ruining all her plans.

But then she found out he was heir to a fortune and her plans changed.

She pulls the shampoo slowly through to the ends of his hair, halfway down his back. That's one competition where it's been tough to admit defeat: he has better, or at least more effective, hair. Shining, flowing, defiant, unmistakeable. She had always prided herself on her beauty and confident sexuality, on her ability to enter a room and turn every head. But now the one who turns heads is Todd. At first Blair comforted herself by assuming it was revulsion they were feeling, the good citizens of Llanview, but as she watched them more closely she realized it was fascination. This man who had committed heinous crimes dares to walk among them, shamelessly, imperviously, magnificently, wearing his scar like a warning, and his long hair like a challenge.

She's seen women watch him with barely cloaked desire, and men redden and look away when she's caught them staring. But Todd is both oblivious and untouchable. He exudes a provocative, intimidating energy which his wealth only amplifies, and he knows it, knew it would happen; he'd wanted to reject the inheritance at first, afraid of returning to what he was, afraid of becoming a monster like his father.

_Take the money. Do it for our child,_ she'd said, and his eyes had softened. She knows exactly where he lives.

So he'd embraced the millions and a power that Blair both envies and subtly manipulates to her advantage. She is getting everything she's ever wanted, trouncing everyone who has ever crossed her and strutting through town on the arm of a man she never intends to love.

Yet she feels smaller than she was, diminished, dependent. She can never forget that it is Todd who makes her new life possible, and that she is only here—by his side, in his thoughts, in his penthouse—because of a lie.

They're still in competition, but he doesn't know it. And as long as she can keep him in their bed, submitting to her every night in dozens of small ways, gasping her name, the sweat-soaked strands of his hair tangled in her hands, she is the one with the power.

She rinses the last of the lather from his hair, lowers her mouth and licks the swell of his lips. His eyes fly open and he starts to respond, but she pulls away.

'Not yet,' she whispers.

His eyes close again, his broad chest expands with a deep inhalation, and he sighs, content. He trusts her so, his friend, the mother of his child.


End file.
